“Speak,” Tazien commanded, cutting through the room’s leaky stillness. “Who are you? Who tied you here?” The man coughed, a wet rattle in his chest, blood flecking his chapped lips. “They… they found me,” he gasped, gaze darting to Rurik. “The hit squad. The strike commander… he knows you’re here.” Tazien's fingers clamped the hilt. “The syndicate enforcer? Personally hunting *me*?” The audacity of the cartel’s executioner tracking her down sparked immediate alarm. “No, not just you,” the bound man stammered, teeth clattering in raw panic. “He’s… he’s bringing the entire squad. Climbing the service stairwell right now. Apex operatives. Wants you *alive*, Ro. Wants you to watch it all burn.” He strained his neck to shout a warning. “And him… he’s not who you think he is, Ro! That spouse of yours… he’s… he’s the—” A loud *thwack* echoed through the room. Rurik, attempting to nudge a loose floorboard back into place with his foot, had tripped over a frayed power cable snaking from the old induction cooktop. His flailing hand struck the stripped copper, showering sparks directly onto the captive’s chest. A high-pitched shriek ripped from the man’s throat, abruptly cutting off. His body arched once in a violent spasm before slumping limp against the sputtering radiator. Ozone and scorched synth-fabric choked the air. “Oh, dearie me!” Rurik exclaimed, scrambling back with a look of theatrical horror. He wrung his hands, eyes wide and watery. “Oh, goodness, what a terrible mess! My apologies, Tazien, my darling! I was just trying to… to fix that pesky floorboard. He just… sparked right up, didn’t he? Oh, the poor chap! Did I… did I kill him? I’m so dreadfully sorry! I’m such a klutz, aren’t I? Always breaking things.” Tazien stared, unblinking, from the smoking corpse to her bumbling mate. The captive had been on the verge of spilling crucial intelligence, potentially about Rurik himself. Now he lay conveniently, spectacularly electrocuted. Suspicion pricked her neck. *An accident? Or an impossibly precise strike to protect his cover?* Before she could fully process the 'accident,' a heavy thud reverberated from the stairwell. Followed by another. The rhythmic cadence of heavily armored boots ascending their way up the Rust-Mansion’s grimy steps. “He’s here,” Tazien murmured, her knife snapping back into its sheath on her forearm. “Rurik, get behind me.” “Oh, good heavens, already?” Rurik whimpered, his face paling. “Are they… are they very mean? Do they use big pointy sticks?” “They use anything that kills,” Tazien clarified, already scanning the dilapidated kitchen. Her gaze locked onto the microwave, a relic from an older decade, its internal wiring stripped bare from a recent tinker. The reinforced entry shuddered, then buckled inward with a deafening crash. The strike commander stood in the frame, clad in polished chrome. His custom combat shell gleamed with cybernetic weaves, optical implants burning dull crimson as he surveyed the tenement room with a curled lip. “Tazien Ro,” the commander purred through a vocoder. “Still crawling in the gutter. And you’ve found yourself a pet. A scrawny, trembling civilian. How… *pathetic*.” He gestured to his squad of half a dozen shock troopers, plasma rifles humming behind polarized visors as they swept the perimeter. Rurik, true to form, let out a terrified squeak and attempted to hide behind Tazien’s leg, peeking out with wide, fearful eyes. “He’s got a very mean voice, Tazien,” he whispered loudly. “And his… his shiny bit looks like it needs a good polish.” The commander's optical lenses narrowed on Rurik. “This is who you tied yourself to, Ro? The master strategist reduced to minding a simpering fool? How the mighty fall.” He crushed a loose floor panel underfoot. “Prepare for extraction. We have a reunion lined up at headquarters. And as for your… partner… we can always use fresh biologicals for the memory scrubbers.” Tazien glanced at the microwave. It hummed softly, blue static flickering across the open circuitry. She had rewired its magnetic core that morning with an unstable micro-cell set to overload on a manual delay—a countdown currently bleeding into single digits. “I wouldn’t count on it,” Tazien said, voice flat and steady. She stepped in front of Rurik, widening her stance while her right hand seized a heavy cast-iron skillet off the counter. “Let’s test that theory.” As the squad raised their weapons, the appliance detonated. A concussive flare erupted across the room, followed by an agonizing shriek of feedback that overloaded polarized HUDs. The soldiers staggered, flailing against the deafening flare. Tazien, eyes shut tight before the blast, lunged forward. She drove the cast iron directly into the commander’s chin. The blow connected with a sharp crack, shattering chrome plating and scattering metal fragments across the floor. The commander roared through fractured jaws, stumbling back into his disoriented unit. “Consider that a down payment!” Tazien yelled over the ringing in her ears. She wheeled around, seized Rurik by his collar, and hoisted him over her shoulder like a sack of synth-grain. “Hold on tight!” “Oh, my poor stomach!” Rurik wailed, upside down. “My lottery winnings! This is quite the unexpected turn of events!” With a driving kick, Tazien shattered the grimy glass, scattering shards down into the neon-drenched depths of Sector 4. She vaulted through the frame into the rain-chilled smog, Rurik’s bewildered yelps tailing behind. Mid-drop, as wind sheared across her cheeks and neon signs blurred into streaks, a detonation blew out the third-floor wall of the tenement they had just cleared. Concrete blew outward in a fiery plume. Only one person had logged their exact unit coordinates. Oola.

Frying Pans and Flashbangs